2015 Volume 96 Pages 1-7
The phylogeny of Kilungius insulanus, which is broadly distributed in the middle part of the Ryukyu Archipelago, was constructed based on the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase c subunit I(COI) gene to evaluate the monophyletic hypothesis of this species. We collected K. insulanus samples from Amami-Oshima Island and Okinawa Island in the Ryukyu Archipelago. Our phylogenies demonstrated that the monophyly of K. insulanus was well supported with a relatively high bootstrap value. This monophyletic relationship was further confirmed by the Shimodaira-Hasegawa test. We found that there was a large genetic divergence between the populations in Amami-Oshima Island and Okinawa Island. Furthermore, there were genetically diverged lineages in Amami-Oshima Island. These results demonstrated that the populations of K. insulanus were genetically subdivided within and among islands, probably due to its limited dispersal ability. Future studies analyzing the populations in the other islands in the archipelago will clarify the origin and the diversification history of K. insulanus.
